Field work / Feltarbeid

Photo from the old hospital, cancer department

Large series of photographs, walltexts and compositions throughout the hospital
Collaboration with Tone Hansen
Public work for Akershus University Hospital
Curator Claes Söderquist and project manager Anne Beate Hovind
2008

akai radio cassette player, bed parking, waiting zone, hospital porters

white light, students in rubber sandals, curved reception in varnished beech wood, the centrel nerve system by Per Brodal, library

Tone Hansen and myself was given the task to evaluate and analyze the art collection of the old university hospital, in order to suggest what was artistically valuable, and important to bring into the new hospital. When I started to document what was there, we saw a lot more opportunities, that transcended the task. The old hospital was full of semi private societies, with different styles of decoration, some of it would be considered art, some of it would not. It became meaningless to evaluate the art works or images themselves, isolated from the visual and social cultures they belonged to.

We redefined our job into this art work:

Photographed scenes from the old hospital, which had images or art in them, was accompanying the "original" art into the new, and very modern hospital, together with a short note in the form of a wall text, describing for instance the sound, a quote from the nearby magazine cover, or other fleeting impressions from their original position. Like a letter from home. It was a way to embrace the new, and still acknowledge the old.

yellow wall, blue table cloth, red pin, get rid of the cellulites!

compressed, medical gas, central compressed air, status ok